Chapter Three
T he alarm went off too early and Wendy wondered at the wisdom of making the girls start school right away. Or at all.
If they were only going to be here a month...
But maybe they’d stay in Lone Rock for longer. Or maybe not. But it would be normal for them to have a school day and ultimately, that was what she wanted. For them to have something that felt normal.
She couldn’t promise them a long time here, or forever or anything close to that, but she could give them something that felt like childhood.
She’d discovered last night that the fridge was fully stocked, and she wondered who had done all this. Boone? It didn’t seem likely since he’d said he needed a house cleaner and had acted like he couldn’t perform basic tasks without help because he was so slammed with setting up the new ranch.
Maybe one of his sisters-in-law had helped.
She’d have to thank someone for it. For the miracle of waking up to having coffee in the house and having bacon and eggs to fix the girls.
And she really didn’t count on Boone showing up right when they were about to walk out the door.
“I thought, if you’d like, I could drive you because I know the way to both schools.”
And she could have figured it out with GPS, she knew, but she very dangerously wanted to take this easier option.
Couldn’t she? For just right now?
“Okay, if...if the girls don’t mind.”
“Sure,” said Sadie, casually.
Because why would she care? This was definitely Wendy’s issue, not her kids’.
“Yeah,” Mikey said, reinforcing that thought.
The girls climbed into the back seats of the crew cab pickup, and Wendy got into the passenger seat. Suddenly, when he closed the door, the cab felt tiny, and she tried to remember if she’d ever been in such close proximity to Boone before.
She hadn’t. She’d remember.
She did remember being at Juniper and Chance’s wedding, because Daniel knew Chance from the rodeo and they’d been invited, and it had an open bar, he’d joked. She’d been sure then that he really wanted to support his friend’s love and happiness. Now she thought it might have really been about the bar.
She remembered Daniel being out drinking and being alone at the big wedding reception.
She remembered looking up and seeing Boone. Looking at her.
Not just looking at her, though, it had been something hotter. Something deeper.
It had stolen her breath and made it impossible to breathe.
It had made her feel...
She had to stop thinking about that now.
She had to.
She kept her eyes fixed on the two-lane road and tried not to let the silence in the truck swallow her whole.
“Well, if you need anything or you need me to come get you, you can text me,” she said, addressing both her daughters with an edgy desperation because she needed something to take over her awkwardness, even if it was a random comment she hadn’t needed to make.
“Thanks, Mom. I’m sure we’ll be fine,” said Sadie.
“Or we won’t be,” Mikey said. “And it will either be a story of great triumph of the human spirit, or our villain origin story.”
“I think we know which one it would be for you, Mikey,” Boone said.
“Villain, for sure,” Mikey said, happily.
The middle school came first.
As they drove away after Mikey got out, Wendy was struck by a feeling of loss and a sense of weird wrongness. She always felt that after summer break, and apparently a new school did that to her too. This weird feeling that she was leaving her kids with strangers. They weren’t strangers. She’d had video meetings with the teachers before they’d come here, and the kids had had a chance to meet them too. But it didn’t make it feel less weird.
She had the same feeling after dropping Sadie off.
But it was replaced instantly by the electric shock of realizing she was alone with Boone.
Alone with Boone, without her wedding rings. Without her kids.
Without anything keeping her from...
“So, what do you need done today?” she asked, because filling the horrible silence with words, any words, was all she knew to do.
“Oh, I’m easy,” he said, slow and lazy and she felt it between her legs.
What was wrong with her?
Was this a trauma response to discovering her husband was a ho?
She would be able to write it off as that much more easily if Boone wasn’t a preexisting condition.
Something that made her feel, deep down, like maybe she’d deserved for Daniel to betray her.
The thought made her feel like she’d been stabbed.
She hadn’t realized she’d been holding on to that feeling. But she had been. Deep down.
She’d been attracted to Boone for years, and she’d done her best to avoid him. Not that avoidance had done anything to make the feelings go away.
She’d done her best to keep it hidden.
Maybe Daniel had known, though, that part of her had always been tangled up in Boone.
She needed to stop thinking about that.
Why did you come to him, then? Knowing it was this complicated, why did you choose this?
Because he’d offered.
That was all.
It was never all. It was never that simple with him.
She took a sharp breath. “I just want to make sure that I’m paying you back, because you’re being so kind to me and...”
Tears welled up in her eyes and she hated that. Now she was crying? What was happening to her?
Why couldn’t she just take what he’d offered, which had been work. And she’d been grateful he’d done it that way because if he’d just given her a place to stay it would have felt loaded, and like charity she couldn’t afford to take, and he hadn’t done that because he’d known. She knew he had known. That she couldn’t take his charity, that she had to earn this fresh start.
That she couldn’t feel like she owed him.
So why was she now falling into crying like it was a favor? Like it was personal.
They were both trying so hard to not make it that and now she’d gone and made it very, very weird, and she couldn’t stop her throat from tightening, couldn’t stop a tear from falling.
She hadn’t cried.
Not once.
She’d gone from rage to determination and she didn’t want to weep now. But it was the kindness of it all.
From a man she’d love to call just another rodeo cowboy.
A man she’d love to lump in with her husband.
But she just couldn’t do that.
“I need to know what you want,” she said, trying to get a handle on her emotions. Her breath. Everything. “Because you offered me work, and I do know how to keep house. Do you need a meal? Do you need something organized?”
“I just moved in, and there are a lot of things yet to unpack.”
But the little cottage was perfectly set up.
“I can do that if you don’t mind me deciding where things go.”
“As long as you tell me where they end up, I don’t mind.”
“Okay, so what do you like to eat?”
“If you want to make me dinner I won’t complain but do something you and the girls like and just make an extra portion.”
She almost wished he was being high-handed. So she could get ahold of herself.
The kindness was almost too much.
You really can’t be pleased.
Well, maybe in her position that was fair?
They pulled up to the house, and she realized she hadn’t been conscious of where they were at all.
He killed the engine, but didn’t get out of the car, and she did something foolish. Very foolish.
She turned her head and looked at him.
And it was like all the space around them became less. Like it contracted and sank beneath her skin. Shrinking around her lungs, her heart, her stomach. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think.
She could only see Boone.
His blue eyes.
That moment at his brother’s wedding when they’d seen each other across the room was suddenly alive again in her memory. Because they’d seen each other that night. They hadn’t simply looked at each other for a moment across a crowded space.
The two things were different.
They were so different.
She hadn’t truly realized it until now.
She tried to breathe, but she couldn’t. Because everything in her was too tight. Too bound up in him.
Bound up in him...
And that did it. Like scissors cutting a string. Everything in her released.
Because she’d thought about being tied up in someone just recently.
It was the very way she’d thought about her relationship with Daniel.
She hadn’t left to get tied up again.
She couldn’t afford that, not ever.
She found herself practically dumping herself out of his truck, her boots connecting with the dirt and sending a cloud of dust up around her.
“I’ll go get changed and then start work,” she said, trying to sound bright, and like nothing had happened.
“Okay,” he said. “Do you need me to show you the lay of things?”
“No. No you go ahead and get started on your day.” She didn’t want to wander around the house with him.
She wished she could pretend.
She wished she could pretend that her strange moments of attraction were indigestion. Or at the very least that they were infrequent, or one-sided.
But if she’d ever been able to trick herself into thinking her attraction to Boone wasn’t mutual, he’d destroyed that with a glance the night of his brother’s wedding.
Because that moment had contained so much deep truth, she’d had to turn away from it.
Because that moment had been filled with an acknowledgment they’d both spent fifteen years turning away from.
They’d been two seconds of prolonged eye contact away from admitting it, for all those years. Never speaking of it wasn’t enough. Because their eyes were determined to give them away.
Then the hitch in their breath.
And Boone...
She remembered him looking like the big bad wolf and the savior of the universe all at once. She’d wanted him to take a step toward her, and she’d wanted him to turn away. She’d wanted him to come for her, and she’d wanted to pretend she’d never even met him.
He’d taken a step.
And she’d taken one back.
And he’d stopped.
He’d listened to her. To everything she couldn’t say. To the single footstep that had been her begging him to stop. To not take them another step further because it would be too far to turn back, and she’d wanted—she’d needed—to be able to turn back.
Just like she’d needed to jump out of the truck now, and he’d let her. She appreciated that.
The way he listened, even when she didn’t speak.
“I’ll just... I’ll just go change,” she said again. “And then I’ll get started.”
His face was like granite. Like at the wedding. “Okay. See you later.”
She couldn’t have made it any clearer that she didn’t want him in her space today. She also couldn’t have made it any clearer that she was attracted to him.
Attracted was a crucial descriptor. Because it was different from wanting.
He wanted her.
He wanted to take her into his arms and kiss her. He wanted to take her to his room and strip her naked and have his way with her.
He wanted her.
Like breathing.
More of a need than anything else.
She was attracted to him, and she did not want it. Not at all.
And he...well, he knew his place here. He was helping her. He cared about her, dammit all. And he was far too familiar with the fallout that happened when people didn’t fulfill their obligations to the ones they were supposed to love.
She’d trusted Daniel and he’d betrayed that trust. Boone would never do that. He would never put her in a position where she felt obligated to him.
That wasn’t why he was helping her.
He never shirked his responsibilities. Not ever.
He didn’t leave people to fend for themselves.
That might be his oldest brother’s way, it might be Daniel’s way. But it would never be Boone’s.
Some people might live in a fantasy world, and others lived with their heads up their asses. Not Boone. He was a realist, and he handled things. He didn’t need to lie to himself or anyone else to get through life.
He’d been like that once. Someone who couldn’t face the hard truths. It caused more harm than good, that was for sure.
He thought about that, a whole lot. The lines between attraction, desire, want, need and feelings. Obligation. All while he worked. Mostly he thought about her. Because she was in that house behind his, and it was the kind of proximity he’d wanted with her for a long time.
His phone buzzed in his pocket.
He pulled it out and saw Daniel’s name again. “What?” he growled.
“Can you just ask her what I can do?”
“If she isn’t answering your calls then there’s not shit I can do for you.”
“We went through hell together, Boone. Who was there for you when you were crying drunk over your brother taking off, huh? When you were the one who had to deal with your mama’s broken heart because her firstborn ran off, after all the pain she went through losing her baby girl...”
“Don’t talk about my family,” he said. “Yeah, you were there for me when Buck ran off, I’ll give you that. You were there when I was feeling squeezed by the family obligation he left for me, but here’s what you’re missing, Dan. Buck and I will never have a relationship again because he had a duty to this family, and he chose himself instead. I don’t like it when people misuse and mistreat people in their lives. When they fall down on their obligations. I can’t respect weak men, and if you don’t live up to your responsibilities, you’re a weak man.” He breathed out, hard, and his breath was visible in the early evening air. “You’re a weak man, Daniel Stevens.”
Then he hung up, because honestly.
He got into his truck and drove back toward the house. It had been a long day of chasing up permits at the county, making arrangements with contractors and going over the sections of land he could use for grazing, what he could irrigate and a host of other things.
Setting up the ranch wasn’t going to be easy. But until his dad retired...
Well, he supposed he’d be taking over as rodeo commissioner in a few years. And he had to do something until then. Maybe after that he’d do what his dad had always done and hire out workers.
Buck had been the one who was supposed to do all this.
But Buck was gone.
Boone knew his brother had been through some shit, he did. But it was no excuse. At least not in his mind.
Even if you were going through something, you should be there for the people in your life. Your responsibilities didn’t just...go away.
He’d told his brother that, the night before his brother had split town for good. Buck had been drinking, far too much. Like alcohol would erase the accident he’d been in. Like it might take away the horror of that night.
And Boone had snapped.
“You have a family, and you aren’t dead. Stop acting like you’re six feet in the ground with your friends. You aren’t.”
“It should have...”
“It wasn’t! You’re alive. Have some gratitude and get back to it. You have responsibilities.”
And then he’d gone.
Boone had felt guilty about his brother leaving until he’d realized guilt was a waste of time. Time he didn’t have to waste. It had been Buck’s choice to leave. It was Boone’s choice to deal with it.
There was no use getting lost in what-ifs.
Boone knew, from the outside looking in, people would probably think of him as a guy who didn’t take much seriously.
They saw a cocky bull rider who could have a different buckle bunny every night when he was in the mood for that. They didn’t see he was the one who held his mom while she wept on difficult anniversaries.
He was the one who took the brunt of their father’s expectations onto his shoulders as the de facto oldest in the absence of the eldest son who had gone off to lick his wounds. A car accident the year Buck graduated high school had resulted in the loss of three of his friends, with Buck as the sole survivor.
It wasn’t that Boone didn’t get why that had fucked him up.
It was just...
They were all a little messed up. They’d watched their baby sister die when they were kids. So why not band together? Why not try to support each other?
That was what he’d never understood.
They’d been a support system, the Carson Clan, and never as close or as stable once Buck had taken his support away.
But his issues weren’t the order of the day.
Today Boone wanted to make sure that Wendy was doing all right.
He pulled up to the front of the house and he smiled, just a little bit, when he saw the lights on in the kitchen. He wondered what it would be like to come home to her, and then he pushed that aside because it was a pointless little fantasy, and if he was going to have a fantasy it was going to be a big, dirty one, not a little domestic one about her in an apron holding a casserole pan.
Except he wouldn’t even let himself have a dirty fantasy about her, not right now. She was too vulnerable, and he wasn’t that guy. Not when her husband had proven to be such a horndog.
He wouldn’t even go there in his head.
He walked up the front steps and into the warmth. This was his house. His home. He hadn’t had one before, not really. It had been a place on his parents’ property, and places on the road all these years, and it was all fine and good, but there was something surreal about walking into something permanent.
Nothing is permanent, Boone.
Yeah, he knew that. Not relationships with older brothers, or little sisters, or anything.
You couldn’t trust a damned thing.
But when he walked in his house it smelled like heaven. And his kitchen was empty.
There was a plate sitting on the counter with foil over the top, and he assumed she’d done the cooking here, but took the rest back to her place and then vacated before his return which...was about right.
Attracted. Not wanting.
He lifted the corner of the tin foil and his stomach growled when the smell of roast and vegetables hit him.
Wendy might not be here, but a home-cooked meal was a close second. And when it made his mouth water, he could have it. So, there was that.
He opened the drawer in the kitchen island and took out a fork, and hunched over the counter, taking bites of food. And then there was a knock at the door.
His stomach went tight, and his heart did something he couldn’t recall it doing before except when he was about to ride a bull in competition. “It’s open,” he said, around a piece of roast, and without moving from his spot.
“I didn’t know if you’d be here yet or not.”
Wendy. And she was lying. Because she’d probably seen him come in and that was why she was here. Because she’d wanted to avoid him. Except she didn’t really.
He could relate.
She came into the kitchen, and she was holding a plate with something on it, but he couldn’t look away from her for long enough to take in what it was. She was wearing pink. The same shade as the dress she’d had on at the wedding.
Her blond hair was in a ponytail, and she had on just a little makeup. Her cheeks were the same color as her dress, and so were her lips. Like a strawberry fantasy just for him.
Even though she wasn’t for him.
There was something about it that made him want her more, and he had to wonder if that was just his body pushing back at years of being good.
Very few people would characterize Boone Carson as good. He understood that and he understood why.
Again, it was the bull riding, drinking, carousing, and on and on. But they didn’t see all the shit he did not do. Like turn away from hardship in his family. Like running away. Like kissing his best friend’s wife at his brother’s wedding.
He deserved a damned Boy Scout patch.
Did Not Fuck My Friend’s Wife.
Also knot tying.
He was good at knot tying.
He didn’t get credit for the things he deserved to.
“I baked a cake over at the cottage while the girls and I had dinner, so I figured I’d bring you some.”
Oh. Cake. That’s what it was. He could see it now, even if it was fuzzy at the edges because he’d rather look at her hands holding the platter than at what was on it. But she’d made it, so he would eat it.
“Are you really eating standing hunched over a counter like a rabid wolf?”
“I don’t think rabid wolves eat pot roast, I think they eat pretty women carrying cake.”
He shouldn’t flirt with her. But her cheeks turned pinker. So he considered that a win.
“Maybe just a regular wolf, then.”
He grinned, making sure to flash his teeth. “Hard to say.”
“You should sit down. There are studies on how you shouldn’t eat standing up.”
“Are there?”
“I’m pretty sure. It’s something I’d say to my kids, anyway.”
“Oh, well, then, I guess I’ll consider myself chastened.”
She glared at him. “I don’t think you are.”
“No. You need shame to feel chastened, I think.”
“And you don’t have any shame?”
He made sure to grin even wider. “None whatsoever.”
If only that were true.
If only he didn’t care so damned much about doing the right thing, and at this point it had nothing at all to do with Daniel. It was about her.
And that was immovable, as far as he was concerned.
“I really...” She closed her eyes for a moment, and he looked at how her lashes fanned out over her high cheekbones and felt a bit like his heart had lifted to the base of his throat, and his lungs right along with it. “I appreciate you doing this,” she said, opening her eyes, letting out a breath.
It was like she released his breath along with it.
Then she walked over to the kitchen island and set the cake plate on it. There was nothing more than a slim length of counter between them now.
She put her hands on the counter and examined them.
He did too.
Her hands, not his.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Daniel has been your friend for longer than you’ve known me,” she said. “You didn’t take his side.”
“There’s no side here,” he said. “To be very clear, I was done with him the minute I...that night, before you got there, he kissed another woman. I had never seen that before, I swear to you. And I looked the other way, I’ll admit that. There were things I didn’t want to know, because...” This was dangerous ground. They both knew it. “You know why.”
“Do I?” she asked.
The words were too loud in the silent kitchen, even though they were practically a whisper.
“Yes,” he said. “You do.”
He cleared his throat. And took another bite of roast. Then he looked at her again. “I tried to keep myself out of your marriage. But I wouldn’t have after I saw that, okay? I want you to understand. I was outright done with him the minute I knew he wasn’t faithful to you. I told him so today.”
“You...talked to him?” Her blue eyes went round.
“Yeah. He called. He wants you back.”
She laughed. “Of course he does. I cook, clean and manage his career. I am an idiot who devoted years of my life to him and gave him two kids and asked for very little and when he wasn’t with me, he was able to pretend I didn’t exist. Who wouldn’t want that woman back?”
She shook her head. “I’m not going to be her anymore.”
He didn’t have any place in this. Didn’t have the right to lecture her, but he was going to do it anyway.
“Don’t blame yourself. I didn’t see it either. Like I said, I had some suspicions I shouldn’t hang around and watch to see what he did with his evenings, but that’s different than actually believing someone is a serial cheater. It’s about him, and what he thinks about the people around him. How much he values them. Not how much value they have.”
“Thank you, Boone,” she said, though she didn’t look at him when she said his name.
How many times had they circled each other like this?
There were so many moments over the years.
So many barbecues where they talked with a table between them and very little eye contact. So many rodeo events where Daniel would leave to get a drink and they’d be standing there, and it was like electricity. But the thing was, they’d never moved toward it.
They both knew it was there.
And that was the most unfair thing of all.
Daniel was the kind of guy who’d hump a table leg. He strayed just because he could.
Boone wanted Wendy in a way that went beyond anything normal, average or everyday. What he felt for her had been instant. It had been ruinous.
It had destroyed something in him he’d never built back up.
Desire like that wasn’t common. It wasn’t typical.
And the man standing in their way, the man who was still in their way because of the position he’d put Wendy in...didn’t deserve the label of roadblock because he wasn’t important enough. Because she hadn’t meant enough to him.
What they’d resisted for the sake of responsibility was something you could write a song about.
And Daniel didn’t resist a damned thing.
But even without any loyalty left to him, Wendy was facing starting over, with her girls. She was in Boone’s care, and Boone would never take advantage of that.
“You’re welcome. I promise when I eat the cake I’ll sit down.”
She did look at him then. “Good.”
He started to move around the side of the island, he didn’t even think about it, but then he watched her eyes get round, watched her posture go stiff, and he stopped.
If he got too close to her...
“Good night,” he said, firmly.
“Good night.”
Attraction wasn’t the same as wanting.
He had to remember that.